One of the terms that people do not seem to understand is the term 'incalculable'.

A while ago I was chatting with someone over a relative that was killed during the terrible fighting that took place on Iwo Jima back in 1945.

The man had told his buddies that he wanted to be a math teacher when he got out of the Marines and someone commented that it was a shame that we lost out on what might have been a pretty good math teacher.

Lord knows we could have used someone that was able to teach people to count because there are not a whole lot of  people in government these days that do know how to count  because if there were, it is likely that we would not be in as bad fiscal shape as we are these days.

I suppose that maybe he would have wound up somewhere teaching kids math, but maybe not.

He could have changed his mind and decided to teach history or maybe go into business or sell insurance or any of a gazillion things. He might have cured a disease, built a bridge over a river, or simply decided to be a drunk and live under a bridge somewhere.

There is no telling what he may or may not have done if he hadn't been killed on Iwo Jima. He very well may have survived both Saipan and Iwo Jima, come home and fallen off the gangplank of the ship returning him of gotten run over by a truck on the way to the train station on the way home to Massachusetts.

On the other hand, he might have taught school like he said he wanted to.

For a while after my father got from home WW2 he thought he might want to raise chickens. (This is beyond me. I'd go nuts raising chickens) He took a part of his GI bill and spent some time in a school in Stockbridge learning about it. It didn't work out and he went to work for a couple of guys and, incidentally, helped open the original Dunkin' Donuts in I believe was Quincy, Massachusetts in 1950.

He then sold insurance for a while and became an auto mechanic part time and eventually slid into that and for almost as far back as I remember he did that and managed to raise five kids.

I do remember him getting on the commuter train in Scituate, the next town over a few times as a toddler and heading into the Boston area while he was selling insurance. Later he told me he didn't like it.

Anyway, Jack, the relative that was killed at Iwo very well might have not become a school teacher and done something else somewhat like my dad did. There really is no way to say simply because it didn't happen.

Back to the term 'incalculable'.

There are so many things that we can never even be close to being sure of. One of the things I insist on is being good to the people we meet in the course of our duties here at sea because there really is no telling what can happen to us if we get someone upset with us.

The damage in customer relations we can do with a single word is incalculable. We can not find out what the damage can, will or might be.

It could just mean the customer gets over it and forgets about it, it could mean the customer runs to his boss and we lose a contract, or maybe even several contracts.

I'd venture to say that entire companies along the line have been brought to their knees by a simple comment made by an employee, yet one would be pretty hard pressed to prove it because something like that from a practical sense is incalculable. It can not be calculated mainly because there are generally ho hard and fast answers for things like that.

Most people don't think of it too much, but there are an awful lot of questions out there that have no way of truly being answered.

There is an awfully large portion of life that falls under the catagory of the word 'incalculable'.

Come to think of it, I suppose I could have made this entire post in few words by simply saying, "You never know."

Of course, the way I figure it, back in '45 some Japanese machine gunner killed off what was likely to be a pretty good math teacher that would have taught some kids to count. One of the kids that learned to count might have become a senator and because he knew how to count he would have been a thorn in the side of a lot of other senators, apparently few of whom have such skills.

But we'll never know



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